


L'appel Du Vide

by heygaymayday



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Ellie (The Last of Us) Angst, F/F, POV Ellie (The Last of Us), The Farm (The Last of Us), Trauma, Traumatized Ellie (The Last of Us)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:40:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26375881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heygaymayday/pseuds/heygaymayday
Summary: L'appel du vide. I read it in a book once. Don't ask me to say it, because I will fuck every sound up, but it's French, I think. Means something like the "call of the void."When I open up the front door, see the snow, I can feel it. The void. Calling me. Like there's a string tied to my spine, threaded through my ribs, exiting my chest, and from somewhere far away, something is tugging on the line. Just a little pull. Small but insistent.So I get my boots, sitting there by the door next to Dina's like that's where they belong, and even though it’s the middle of the night I push the screen door open and it whines in protest, like it knows I should stay inside. Like it knows the void has a hold on me and maybe it's calling for help.
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 75





	L'appel Du Vide

**Author's Note:**

> Ellie's POV. Just a small one-off. Occurs in the winter before her departure from the farm.

I'm not sleeping.

And that's okay. 

I'm pulling the blankets back up over Dina, even though she's just gonna kick them to the end of the bed again. I'm moving barefoot through our bedroom, quiet and slow. A thief in the night. I'm slipping into the gray halls of our house and I'm trying to feel like I know where I am. Like this is home. Like this is where I belong.

I'm letting my fingertips brush these walls we painted together, colors applied with jokes and laughter back in the summer, when the sun warmed up the old floorboards and Dina's belly was getting rounder by the day and I was fucking afraid.

I was scared as shit--the deep, rattling kind of fear that follows you around, sticks to your skin like a pernicious oil slick, makes your hands shake when you most need them to be steady. Because that round belly made me happy, reminded me that there were good things left in this world, things left to fight for, and yet--it was a reminder that violence was coming, wasn't it? 

It's like knowing, in advance, that a car crash is going to happen. Like scheduling it. Like, _yes, sometime in November this person you love is going to be in a car accident; they're going_ _to undergo an intense physical trauma and they may or may not live through it. Plan accordingly._

How do you fucking plan for that? 

I didn't know what I would do if I lost Dina. I still don't. I really don't.

So I was afraid, yeah, as we painted the walls in that hallway, but I was laughing, too. Dina has a way of doing that. A way of reaching through my fear to find something good--even when I know she's afraid, too. Even when I know the good things in me, they're finite. 

One day maybe she'll reach and her fingers will scrape an empty floor, a barren bottom of the pail, and then what? 

I'm stepping around the spot on the landing that creaks and my palm fits perfect around the stairway bannister, like it was made for me. Me for it. Like whoever built this house, a hundred years ago, like they knew I was coming. That I'd be here, in the middle of the night, sleepless and wandering and reaching for something to steady me on the dark stairs.

I'm taking those stairs one at a time, like it's important to remember each one. Like I don't want to forget. Seventeen stairs, seventeen steps between one floor and the next. Seventeen stairs to the ground.

And down in the entryway, I can feel the cool draft pushing in around the cracks of the front door. Cold and damp. There's a faint, delicate glow through the windows, from 

It's snowing.

 _L'appel du vide._ I read it in a book once. Don't ask me to say it, because I will fuck every sound up, but it's French, I think. Means something like _the call of the void._

The book said it was normal. Normal to stand on a high bridge and, just for a second, think of throwing yourself over the side. A thought so quick and fleeting maybe you aren't even sure it really happened. 

I don't wanna kill myself, so don't get fucked up over that. It's not about that. It's just a moment when some part of you, something down inside your chest, wonders what that must be like, to be _nothing._

It's a longing for chaos, for the enormity of a silence so encompassing that our brains get fucked up just trying to take it in. It's the _what if_ that makes some part of us want to touch a hot stove, even when all our common sense knows--it's going to fucking hurt.

It's the _void_. It's our innate, unyielding, secret tie to mortality. Our fucking stupid desire to self-destruct. 

When I open up the front door, see the snow, I can feel it. The void. Calling me. Like there's a string tied to my spine, threaded through my ribs, exiting my chest, and from somewhere far away, something is tugging on the line. Just a little pull. Small but insistent. 

So I get my boots, sitting there by the door next to Dina's like that's where they belong, and even though it’s the middle of the night I push the screen door open and it whines in protest, like it knows I should stay inside. Like it knows the void has a hold on me and maybe it's calling for help.

My boots are loud against the floorboards of the porch, here in the silence of the night, and that's okay. I'm okay.

I step off the porch and the snow's crunching under my feet and it sounds like glass on concrete, feels like the ground giving out under me, and that's okay. That's okay. That's okay. I'm okay. I'm okay.

Out here in the dark everything is gray. Everything is cold. Snow's melting into my boots. It's okay.

The snow stretches out in every direction and it makes the world look like a different place. Makes everything seem new. Fresh. Clean. Makes the farm look like someone else's farm. Like someone else's work. But it's not. It's _my_ work. It's my hands. My fingers in the ground, turning the soil. My palms, scraped and splintered from notching the planks for that fence. My arms, cradling the first little goat born inside that barn. 

So why doesn't it feel, right now, like any of that counts?

I'm standing in my cold boots and looking back at the house and its coat of white, at the little packs of snow caught on every window sill, on the slanted roof, on the rails of the porch. It looks like such a gentle place. More gentle than ever before. It looks like quiet and sounds like it, too.

It looks like _easy_ . Looks like _simple_ . Looks like _home._

Looks like the kind of place where anyone would wanna be. 

And inside, I know it's warm. I know every room is alive and humming with love, so full and real and deep you can't get away from it, even if you wanted. Even if you don't deserve it. Even if you don't deserve to be there. Don't deserve all that humming love.

There's a baby in there. You know it? A real fucking baby. The tiniest goddamn hands you ever saw. Each little finger more perfect than the last. He sleeps like a champ. You don't know _perfect_ until a baby--a living, breathing little piece of someone you love--falls asleep there on your chest, with their little head tucked under your chin. Like you're the safest goddamn place in the world. Like you deserve it. Their trust. Their wide open, conditionless love. 

He doesn't know what I've done. He doesn't know what I did to him, before he ever took his first fucking breath. How I almost got them both killed. How I bathed them both in blood, when all Dina ever wanted was _this_ \--snow on the roof. Quiet and easy and simple. Rooms humming with love. Home.

And me?

I am not _this_. 

I'm standing here with my feet in the snow and my face aching with cold and I know it, down in the center of my bones, I do. I know I've just been pretending. Dina, too. We've all been pretending.

Pretending that somehow I'm anything more than just a wild animal they've brought in from the woods. 

Just look at all the blood still on my paws. Look at all the sticky black violence matted in my fur. Look at the flesh still stuck between my teeth. 

Look at me. 

Fucking look at me. 

My hands aren't made for holding, aren't made for helping or healing. They're not made for comforting or caring. 

My hands are for crushing. For spilling and splattering and splintering. My hands are scavengers. My hands steal and strip and strangle.

Maybe they turn soil and notch fences and hold babies, too. Maybe. But _should_ they? How can I hold him--that magic, trusting, breath-and-blood bit of Dina--with these clawed, crippling paws? With blood not yet dried? Not in my mind. It's never dry, in my head. It never dries.

How long can I do this? How long can I pretend? How long until the broken parts of me splinter off like shrapnel and fuck everything up? 

How long until I hurt them, in one way or another.

Because part of me is here, in the humming rooms, asleep on a couch with a baby, painting walls and laughing, pulling the blankets back up over Dina for the third or fourth or fifth time in a night--but another part of me is gone. Another part of me is listening to the void and thinking: _Yeah. I'm coming. Hold on._

I wanna ask how you did it. I wanna know how you gave your hands new purpose. I wanna know how you found it in you to change. How you let go of what you were and let yourself be something new. All for some idiot kid who didn't deserve it. Who didn't know. Who couldn't. 

You changed for me and now I have to change for them but I don't know how. I really don't.

I used to be able to hear you, y'know? I would be on the verge of doing some kind of stupid shit, and I would hear your voice. _Don't do it, girl._ It used to happen all the time. You were the voice that kept me safe. _See that stagger in his step? Hit him in that knee if you need to put him down. Slow up, check that corner before you go runnin' into a room full of infected. Stop and listen. You're bleedin', wrap that up while you got the chance. Nah, I don't like her, keep an eye on her._

It was my own instincts, I know that. But I always heard it in your voice. I really did. You were keeping me safe, even when you didn't know it. You were speaking to me, even when I wouldn't speak to you. Wouldn't look at you. Wouldn't acknowledge that you existed. Even then, you were here.

I wanna ask how you did it, how you changed, but I can't, not even here inside my own head, because I can't even think about you without tasting blood. Without feeling like I'm going to throw up. Without spiraling closer to the void. 

I can't ask because I can't hear you anymore. 

Because I haven't heard you since you've been gone.

You're an empty space, a hole punched straight through my brain, through whatever the fuck kind of fabric makes up my soul, and the rest of me is trying so hard to keep going, to keep working around that blankness. Around that void. 

And maybe that's the problem. Because the void used to be on the outside, but now it's here, in my chest. An emptiness I can't fix, can't expunge or expel. You're an emptiness that's draining me--and yet the emptiness, the wound, is the only proof I have that you were real at all.

Because I can't hear you anymore. 

And maybe I need to follow the void. Maybe I need to listen to the only thing I _can_ hear.

How long have I been out here? I don't know. My arms hurt. My face is numb. There's a hand reaching out, fingers closing over mine, and from somewhere far away I hear Dina's voice: _Let's go back inside, Ellie._

Her voice is gentle and calm but there's fear in it. Like she's talking to a wild animal. Which is she more afraid of--that I'll run, or that I'll bite?

She tugs at my hand, and I just want to make this right. I just want to fix the years I lost with you, want you to know how much it hurts, want to _know_ that _you know_. That I'm sorry.

God, I'm so fucking sorry.

I'm standing in the snow and I'm looking at this person who I love more than fucking life itself, who makes me happier than I have any right to be; I'm looking at the planes of her face, washed pale in the glow of moonlight and snow, and I'm crying like an idiot. Like a fucking idiot. And it's not okay. I'm not okay.

 _Ellie_ , Dina says it softly, _Ellie, baby--_

I tell her I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so fucking sorry, Dina.

Sorry for what I've done. 

Sorry for what I might do.

Sorry I'm even here in the first place.

She doesn't understand, or maybe I'm not even using real words, I don't know anymore. She just pulls on my hand again and she shouldn't be out here, it's freezing--she should be inside, with humming love and warmth and a baby. 

But me.

I might be losing my goddamn mind, Joel.

  
  



End file.
